[474] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 219 foll.; Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 31 foll. The ground had been prepared for the new view by the elaborate articles in Roscher's _Mythological Lexicon_, vol. ii. pp. 2253 foll. and 2901 foll. Of late a painstaking discussion by J. G. Winter has appeared in the _University of Michigan Studies for 1910_, p. 171 foll.; he mainly confirms Wissowa's conclusions, but provisionally accepts a suggestion of mine (_R.F._ 197) that the tithe practice of the _ara maxima_ may possibly have been of Phoenician origin, and points out that E. Curtius made the same suggestion as long ago as 1845. On p. 269 he also dwells, very properly, I think, on the part which the Etruscans may have had in the dissemination of the myth and cult of the Greek Heracles. Wissowa, however, stoutly maintains that these are simply Greek and of commercial origin. It has been Wissowa's special and valuable function to elucidate the Greek origin of many Roman cults and legends; but I doubt if he has adequately considered the influence of other peoples, and in particular of Phoenicians and Etruscans. Certainly the Hercules question is not finally settled by his masterly analysis of it in _R.K._ p. 220 foll. But most of what I said in _R.F._ about the Hercules of the _ara maxima_ may now be considered obsolete; and I may add that my remarks on the supposed connection of Hercules with Genius, Dius Fidius, and Jupiter in the same work, p. 143 foll., have lost much strength since Wissowa's book appeared. Yet I am not prepared to accept the view which would deny to Hercules on Italian soil all contamination with Italian ideas; as Willamowitz-Moellendorf puts it (_Herakles_, ed. 2, vol. i. p. 25), "Die Italiker haben dem Koerper, den sie uebernahmen, den Odem ihrer eigenen Seele eingeblasen: aber wie der Name ist der Gestalt des Hercules hellenischer Import." There are points in connection with the Roman Hercules, _e.g._ the _nodus herculaneus_ of the bride's girdle, which Wissowa does not explain, and which, so far as I can see, can only be explained by assuming that, as might have been expected, the Greek Hercules became to some extent entangled in the web of Italian thought.